“I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country, and people violate laws any time they want. So, for me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention to it. There’s nothing more important than counting votes.”
—Bucks County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia, excusing Bucks County’s decision to count misdated or undated mail-in ballots after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court clearly stated that such ballots were invalid.
[Expanded commentary is below, after the original post.]
You can’t get much more unethical than that in so few words.
1. The edict about the invalid ballots wasn’t a court precedent, it was a ruling. If she doesn’t know the difference, she has no business being a commissioner. If she does know the difference, then she was lying.
2. Next she invokes the hoariest unethical rationalization of them all, #1 on the list,, “Everybody Does It.”
3. The statement that people violate laws any time they want is false and a direct attack on the Rule of Law as well as the character of Americans. In fact, the vast majority of American obey the law.
4.”…if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention to it” is incoherent. Pay attention to what? The law? The court issued a decision; they already paid attention to it. To Ellis-Marseglia? Hey, why not go piss on the judges’ robes then? What kind of juvenile, incompetent reasoning is that for an official? Her statement is incompetent as well as irresponsible.
5. “There’s nothing more important than counting votes.” This endorses the established Democratic Party practice of counting votes for Democrats whether they are legal, follow the rules, or are cast by qualified voters. What she means, of course, is that there is nothing more important than counting illicit votes if they can re-elect a Democratic Senator who would lose without them.
At least her outrageous comment got her the amount of abuse and distain its deserved, which is to say, “a lot,” causing her to grovel an unsatisfactory apology. The passion in my heart got the best of me and I apologize again for that,” Bucks County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia said in front of a hostile crowd at a county meeting. “I made a mistake, and because I am an elected official, I am held to a far higher standard than everybody else. So, to the citizens I serve, I apologize, and I will continue to work hard for you and endeavor to not make such a mistake again.”
How do you spell..
?????
We’ve had a lot of women blaming their emotions for behaving like jerks lately; this doesn’t help dispel negative female stereotypes. Further more disapproving of a County Commissioner who says she’ll violate a court ruling because she feels like it and that’s what everybody does isn’t being held to a”much higher standard.” That’s the standard every citizen should be held to from about the age of twelve up: obey the law, obey court interpretations of the law, don’t break laws to “get attention.”
She’s a disgrace to her office and should resign.
Added, 11/21: I had intended to highlight the fact that Ellis-Marseglia, in her worthless mea culpa, said that her comment about “precedents” was inspired by her outrage over the Dobbs decision, but I forgot. This makes her conduct even more unethical, if that’s possible.
Her “thinking”: “Because I think, as a social worker with no experience in law or jurisprudence [I doubt she has read the Dobbs decision] that the Supreme Court should have followed the precedent of Roe v. Wade regarding the abortion issue, I am justified defying the ruling of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which had nothing to do with Dobbs, and count illegal votes in order to try to overturn the election of a Republican Senate candidate who also had nothing to do with Dobbs, and to cancel out the votes of the Pennsylvania citizens whose votes against Senator Casey also had nothing to do with abortion or Dobbs.”
Her position was particularly incompetent and unjustifiable because the oft-stated objection to Dobbs wasn’t that SCOTUS didn’t follow precedent, as many precedents were cited in the Dobbs majority opinion, but that it didn’t follow the Court standard of stare decisus, which holds that SCOTUS should not overturn long-standing decisions except in unusual circumstances. If she was going to take a stand on principle, Ellis-Marseglia, she was obligated to understand what principle she was standing for. She didn’t.
She’s an irresponsible fool.
Ethics Alarms 
The audience did not accept her apology and one stated she was going to file a criminal complaint on her and the other Democrat commissioner. That audience was bipartisan in their vitriol.
Jesus H. Christ. This woman was quoted spouting this lefty vitriol four days ago! The Rule of Law. What’s that?
Pennsylvania Democrats openly admit to counting illegal ballots in McCormick-Casey race | Fox News
Ooops. Forgot to include this link. It’s the Burgundy speaking.
“It’s the Burgundy speaking.”
When BURGUNDY speaks, one best listen…
PWS
Shoulda seen that one comin’ Paulie.
And, of course, these are the same people who cannot imagine why we would have any questions at all about the 2020 election.
You know, I’ve heard that Trump might pardon any of the Jan. 6 riot people who were not convicted of a violent offense. More and more I’m thinking that might only be just. Many of those people were treated shamefully and, I believe, without regard for the rule of law.
I read the excuse of Diane Ellis-Marseglia, Bucks County Commissioner, as a badly worded case of civil disobedience.
Below I have pasted chatgpt’s response to my question for the meaning of civil disobedience.
If she had not said the first sentence in the quote her excuse would read,
So a close reading of this part of her excuse, with an open mind, matches the definition of civil disobedience.
Bear with me.
She is passionate about counting votes; all votes matter.
She perceived an injustice; many votes were not counted because of dates not filled in or filled in incorrectly.
It made het question the legitimacy of certain rules; such a small error is not a good reason to not count these votes.
She felt a moral duty to resist this unjust administrative rule and subsequent court ruling and this led her to deliberately disobey voting laws, regulations, court rulings, government policies, etc. etc.: in other words, civil disobedience.
She did not permit the government/law to overrule her conscience; she kept on counting.
She used a non-violent approach: at least, no physical violence.
Het aim was to raise awareness about a cause and to push for social change: as she said, “I want a court to pay attention to it.”
Given that Diane Ellis-Marseglia, Bucks County Commissioner, engaged in Civil Disobedience, it is not fair to call her a disgrace to her office and call for her resign.
She is proudly standing in a tradition of civil disobedience fitting perfectly America’s individualistic culture.
She should be rewarded by elect President Trump with an important role in (re-) organizing future elections.
Diane Ellis-Marseglia has in common with Trump that she is not precise enough in her language.
If she had consulted a competent lawyer (disclosure: IANAL) and/or text writer her excuse would have been so much better formulated and more defensible.
========
Civil disobedience according to chatgpt,
Civil disobedience by a government official in the course of discharging her duty? If a Republican did that, they’d be thrown in jail for insurrection. If she has an objection, she should file a lawsuit. If that fails, she should resign. There’s no civil disobedience in government work. Resignation in protect is the only available route.
Plus civil disobedience entails accepting the consequences of your actions in order to better draw attention to the absurdity of those consequences.
Her job is to follow the law. So losing that job and facing legal consequences should be a result of her civil disobedience.
(I corrected “Bare with me”—I hope that was right. I had an image of you stripping off your clothes in protest like Tom Wilkinson is “Michael Clayton”…)
Thanks. First bare, than bear hug. How awesome!
”I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country…”
My immediate reaction to this part of her statement was that it was a swipe at the SCOTUS regarding the Dobbs decision, which has had leftist women setting their hair on fire for the past couple of years. As for the civil disobedience claim, if it were true she should have invited her governor to charge her with violating the election laws, (which he should have done anyway) and she should now be contentedly sitting in jail singing “We Shall Overcome,” or maybe “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen. She should be reminded that something more important than “counting votes” is following your oath of office and obeying the law, and having the integrity to resign that office if you cannot do those two things. You can then pick up a protest sign and wail to your heart’s content about the injustice of all those rejected ballots that didn’t get counted because they didn’t comply with the existing voting laws. Altogether a moronic display, to be sure.
It was exactly that, and I just this minute added a section to the post on that topic.
That was my interpretation as well. Basically, her argument is that If women can’t abort their unborn children at will in every state throughout the country, any law can be violated if you don’t like it.
The positions these folks wrap themselves into to be able to protect Roe are untenable. It led to people like Justice Brown-Jackson arguing during her confirmation hearings that Plessy v Ferguson shouldn’t have been overturned.
Her civil disobedience effectively nullified legitimate votes. So in effect she is saying that it is ok to suppress legitimate voter by allowing unlawful votes to count. I would assume that she would also advocate for non-citizen residents to vote because they too should have a say in policies.
How does she justify that rules for voting are unjust. The instructions are plain. Failure to follow instructions invalidate the ballot. Is it unjust if they showed up on Wednesday, November 6 to vote? Is it unjust if they fail to fill in an oval that they meant to fill in but filled in the wrong one?
Unjust laws that King and Gandhi protested were about human rights. King protested about separate facilities and opportunities for blacks and whites. He did not push to take a right away from another by invalidating the right of another. Neither King nor Gandhi were government officials and were limited to civil disobedience
This commissioner knows there is a process to change the laws and took it upon herself as a government official to invoke her standard of justice. We call officials who do that dictatorial and not acts of civil disobedience.
One other point. Those who take an oath to uphold the laws – such as this commissioner – are estopped from engaging in civil disobedience.
In general terms, I agree with your statement,
And there are, as always, exceptions. I do not know enough of this situation to conclude if any exception is relevant.
If you believe that an exception is warranted you work as a citizen to get the exception made legislatively. You do not usurp the powers of the legislature. If you are unhappy and cannot in good conscience enforce a rule you resign.
I really do not know how an exception can be made for rules that prevent fraud from occurring. If all ballots should be counted no matter what, how do we prevent people from anonymously submitting ballots or adding votes after a count to change the outcome.
And yet, those votes are now in the totals. It worked and no one goes to jail. As far as I can tell, they are still counting, trying to overturn the initial count. Sen. Fetterman and Gov. Shapiro have excused the illegal counts because “it isn’t THAT many illegal votes” and “The Supreme Court ruling was REALLY unclear and it could mean that you SHOULD count illegal ballots, like the 2 other courts said” (both paraphrased). If Casey wins, anyone who claims election fraud will be listed as an ‘election denier’.
Casey was petitioning to be allowed to count votes from verified unregistered voters so we wouldn’t ‘disenfranchise anyone’.
Diane Ellis-Marseglia is unethical, BUT CORRECT. Laws and court rulings mean nothing if you are the ‘right people’. Laws and court rulings are for little people and Republicans.
As for this being an act of civil disobedience, perhaps. However, not all acts of civil disobedience are laudable. The Buck’s County Commissioners were also closing the polls early. They also had Democratic Party operatives pulling people out of the voting line and telling them they would have to come back tomorrow. Why? you might ask, what is this great cause they are fighting for by any illegal means possible? To keep Democrats in power. So yes, civil disobedience to make sure the people’s voice is overruled by their betters. Buck’s County is overwhelmingly Republican and the commissioners are almost all Democrats. The commissioners don’t want the actual vote total from their constituents to ‘influence’ the election. They need to ‘manage’ the votes.
Buck’s County is overwhelmingly Republican and the commissioners are almost all Democrats.
Well yes, what can I say? That each county gets the commissioners they deserve? I would expect that the commissioners as a group are a reflection of the voters.
1+1=2
You have an overwhelmingly Republican county and mostly Democratic commissioners. Those commissioners will go on record stating that they will violate election laws to achieve their desired goal. I wonder how those Democratic commissioners stay in power…
I am wondering if Zanshin would support the Republican voters overthrowing the commissioners by force. They can’t go to the courts, there is no law enforcement to help them, so what are you suggesting that they do? In Buck’s County, when a voter said that they can’t tell you to leave the line before 5 PM (and they were correct), that voter was arrested and put in jail.
In my city, we have ‘nonpartisan elections’ which means that the elections are run by the Democratic Party bosses. There are 2 bosses in town. They fund all the candidates behind the scenes.* There is no local press, no investigation of the candidates at all.* You can go to the candidates’ Facebook pages, but you will find the same thing for all of them, it won’t help you choose a candidate.* When someone went to the City Council to complain that the councilors were committing illegal acts of corruption, he was arrested, banned from all city property for life, and threatened with being charged with making terroristic threats (for exposing corruption). The canvassers and yard signs are almost all for the boss’s candidates. When you go to vote, the boss’s candidates are there 1st and 2nd, then everyone else. The judges are Democrats, so the boss’s candidates can put signs on city property, school property, etc.* If you are an independent candidate, they will tell you that all YOUR yard signs must be 30 feet from the curb because of city ‘easements’.* No putting signs in the road easements for YOU.* Businesses may be threatened if they put your sign on their property, even if they are a close friend of yours.*
I vote for the person with the least number of yard signs if I can’t find out anything about the candidates from word of mouth. That is a lot of work and most people don’t know people who can give them honest information about the candidates.
*Things I have experienced firsthand or have been personally told by the person it happened to.
Please let us not elevate her illegal, unethical actions and hubris to the level of civil disobedeince, ala Gandhi.
Gandhi protested againts un just laws. She “protested” against and blocked the ballot box.
I can think a few ways to more succintly express her unethical, illegal actions. “Fuck you all, I am queen!” come to mind.
Her apology, however, needs more words. “I resign and waiver all salaries and benefits stemming from the job I refused to accomplish competently, legally, and ethically.!”
“Brazen” keeps coming to mind.